Will we see a Better LBJ in '11-'12?

[dhh2h]

Hey guys, I'm probably drafting LBJ in my fantasy league this year and I was wondering what you Heat fans think he'll be able to do this year.

I think he'll take in a lot of motivation from the loss to Dallas and come back stronger, but I don't know where he could improve realistically with Bosh + Wade with him. His blocking was pretty weak (0.6) compared to what we saw in CLE (1.2) so he could improve that and I noticed that he's been making/attempting less 3's then he did in CLE, but other than that, what do you guys predict from LeBron this year?

[ninjabelly]

i think he'll definitely be better, i don't know about stats wise though, riley has made it obvious he's trying to preserve wade and lebron so they'll probably get less minutes, lebron made an obvious effort to conserve his energy too during the season.

hes still a high fantasy pick, but i wouldn't take his first.

[Miamis3rdRing]

I'm usually not too good with the whole stat prediction thing, but here are some things I'm expecting:

- The first month or so last year he had to shake off rust like every other player, not to mention learn how to play with Wade/Bosh/etc. This season I'm not expecting such as slow of a start by him since he knows what to expect for the most part.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/players/370 ... bwhunJPKB4

You can see how much his stats went up after the month of December. Much more efficient too.

- He basically played the same amount of minutes per game here as he did in Cleveland. I'd like to think his minutes will be reduced a bit this year. Not a ton, but instead of 38-39 mpg more around 35ish.

As far as taking him first, I agree w/ninjabelly. Gotta wonder if guys like Dwight, CP3, Bynum, etc etc will have their stats suffer from non-stop trade rumors if something doesn't go down soon.

[SideshowBob]

I see him scoring 28.3 points per game, at 62-63% TS, 34ish% from 3

Free throw attempts will be down, FT% should be in the 76-78% range

Rebounds should be just under 8 a game and assists will be down from last year, just around 6 a game

I don't think there will be much of a difference for blocks and steals, maybe blocks go back up to around 1 a game

Turnovers will be down. Last year was a pretty big outlier for him in that regard. I think he'll be down around 2.8 to 3 a game

I'm not a big fantasy guy, but I tried to cover most of the basic stats. I should state that these predictions are based off the trends I saw for Lebron during the second half of the season, once him and Wade really started to show signs of gelling a little bit. These are roughly his post All Star break averages

[EscapoTHB]

stats for everyone across the league are going to be hurt I think by the condensed schedule.